Yesterday I was waffling about rifles.

This morning, it’s settled.

I went to the local indoor gun range to recheck zero. I took my 6.8 and my .308 bolt-action. I haven’t shot the .308 since the water buffalo, so I figured it would be right to verify it. I knew the 6.8 was where I wanted it, but I had cleaned the gun when I got home so I wanted to shoot it to ensure all was truly good.

I’m glad I did.

I shot the .308 first. The results surprised me: the holes were all over. I’m not totally sure why. Yes, everything was within a 3″ circle at 100 yards, but it should have been around 1″ circle. Things did not go where I was aiming. Sure, it’s still “minute of dead deer”, but after 5 shots I figured it let the rifle cool down and I’ll try again later. I switched to the 6.8 (I’ll recount that momentarily), then came back to the .308. This time 5 rounds and while the grouping was much better, it still wasn’t as tight as it should be. Still, she should be good to take anything out to 250 yards (put the crosshairs in the middle of the target zone, press trigger, it should handle it), but she is going to be backup gun. I’ll have to look deeper into her issues later.

But the 6.8? Oh… she sung.

That’s 5 shots of SSA 6.8 SPC 85 gr. Barnes TSX tactical load at 100 yards. It’s shooting where I want it, grouped decent enough. I should have shot 7 to 10 for a better grouping average but I didn’t have a lot of time this morning and the range was getting pretty busy. Still, it felt right, it was consistent with the last time out.

I can only wonder if the gods are saying to me to leave the .308 behind and shoot the 6.8. It’s what I want to do, and seeing how things went this morning, I feel confident the 6.8 is going to perform this time around and the water buffalo incident was a fluke. The .308 will go with me, but I reckon she’ll be cold all weekend. 🙂

Wish me luck.